


One Little Room

by DonnesCafe



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 221B Baker Street, Angst, Character Death, Declarations Of Love, Falling In Love, First Kiss, First Time, Love Letters, M/M, Sex, relationships(s), sadfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-07
Updated: 2014-03-07
Packaged: 2018-01-14 22:21:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1280926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DonnesCafe/pseuds/DonnesCafe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft brings John a letter from Sherlock on a difficult day for both of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Little Room

”John.” 

He turned from the window reluctantly and from the past with a sigh. 

”Mycroft.” Mycroft stood in the doorway. Impeccably dressed as always, this time in a dark suit. Black tie. Black armband. Mycroft was always one for the proper gesture. His face was as grey as his hair. He looked exhausted. 

”May I come in?” 

”Of course. Sorry. Sit…,” He gestured to Sherlock’s chair, but then his voice failed him. 

Mycroft shook his head. “No,” he said softly. He walked up to John. He reached inside his coat and drew out an envelope. 

”Sherlock….,” he paused. Something passed swiftly over his face, his lips thinned, and he looked down at the floor for a moment. Then he straightened, took a breath. “When I asked if I could meet you here an hour before the…. before, it was because Sherlock asked me to give you this. He was very precise in his instructions.” A trace of the old Mycroft superciliousness found its way into his voice. 

John was glad of it. He actually smiled at Mycroft. “He was…. always precise. And demanding,” he said. He took the envelope. The bold, spiky strokes of that handwriting. His index finger softly traced the “J” in John. “What is it?” 

”Something he wanted you to read before the service.” Mycroft hesitated, then turned. “I’ll be in the kitchen.” 

John walked over to the desk and picked up the antique dagger Sherlock had always used as a letter opener. He didn’t want to tear the envelope. It was the last…. His vision blurred. He took out the three folded sheets. Unfolded them. Same spiky handwriting. He refolded the sheets, turned, and went over to his chair. Same comfortable, shabby chair after all these years. He sat heavily. He held the sheets, still folded, for what seemed like a long time, his eyes closed. Then he unfolded them and began to read. 

~~~~~~~~ 

John, 

Dearest, dearest John, 

Although known for my arrogance, I am not arrogant enough to think that any words of mine will make this day easier for you. I have thought, however, that if our positions were reversed, the thing I would most want would be you. For you to be with me today. Ironic, isn’t it, that the person you are mourning is the one person in the world who would truly understand your grief? Who would understand what it is, exactly, that you have lost. So this is the best I can do to be with you today – just words now. 

You have endured too many tragedies in your life. I wish I could have prevented this one. But, as Mycroft told me once, all lives end and all hearts are broken. It breaks my heart to leave you. Although the thought of it terrifies me, I wish our positions had been reversed. That I was the one killing time before your funeral. 

Speaking of killing, what’s best about the thing that is killing me is that, aside from the killing part, it is being fairly polite about it. Quick enough, but not too quick, faculties intact. I can finish here at Baker Street instead of someplace that’s not home. Thank Julia for me – she’s been the perfect nurse. Unobtrusive, competent, kind, and actually intelligent. She has also been my accomplice. You know I never slept much at the best of times. Neither of you fussed overmuch because I wanted to spend my nights here on the sofa, not off in the bedroom. This room is the heart of everything. But more of that later. 

I’ve been writing this across the nights while you’ve been sleeping devotedly by my sofa, your chair dragged across the room. Did you think I was kind not to have tried to make you go to bed? But I wasn’t kind. As always, I’m the selfish one. I wanted to be able to put my hand on your hair while you slept, to listen to you breathe. You’ve been trying to stay awake with me all through this, but Julia and I both knew it wouldn’t be good for you. So she helped me drug you from time to time. She might have a career as a poisoner, that one. Very skilled. 

So, as you’ve slept, I’ve kept this and my favorite Mont Blanc hidden under the Britannia cushion that’s behind my back. I’ve taken them out when I had the energy, to leave some words, some images for you to have after. Twenty years of thoughts and images from our time together. Eternity would not have been enough, but twenty years is a nice, round number. I count the two years we weren’t in this room. It was still here, full of us, full of memories, waiting for us. In some ways, we never left it. I know I didn’t. I would stand looking out whatever window, in whatever hellhole I found myself, and pretend I was looking down on Baker Street. That you were just in the kitchen making tea. 

John, be kind to Mycroft. I’m sure you never thought those were words you would hear from me. He will panic when I ask him to give you this, fearful of your grief and his own. I’m sure he’ll be hiding out in the kitchen at the very moment you’re reading it. He won’t know what to say to you, although he will try his best. All evidence to the contrary, Mycroft loves me and will be thinking that somehow he could have saved me. He always thought that, and often he did. He will be astonished in the end that medical miracles aren’t part of his many powers. My brother respected you from the beginning and came to hold you in affection over the years, so he will worry about you. Let him help. It will give him something to do. 

As I watch you sleep, I’ve been thinking about why I never wanted to move out of 221B after all this time. I know we talked about Sussex and the bees, but I’m not sure I would have ever managed to leave this place. Even if I had lived long enough to retire. 

There was a book of Donne’s poetry in the stack of books and articles that Mycroft dumped on the sofa to keep me from trying to go outside last week. It struck me as odd, but it turned out that Donne is a good 3:00 a.m. poet. Lots of interesting stuff about love and death. This particularly caught my eye, “…for love, all love of other sights controls, and makes one little room, an everywhere.” I wondered who his lover had been, how he knew exactly how I felt about this room. 

This room became my world because you became my world. I am happy now, looking at every chair, every pile of papers, our computers, the wallpaper, the tile in the kitchen. They are my universe, and you, sleeping at an awkward angle with your hand on my sofa, your hair in disarray, and a worried look on your face even as you sleep – you are the center of that universe. I’ll make you a little catalog of some of the stars and planets that surround me as you sleep. 

The stairs. They were our first juncture, a turning point, in our history. It would have to be up a steep set of stairs. I saw you take a firm grip on your cane when you came over the threshold and looked up the stairs. I bounded up ahead of you because I didn’t want you to be embarrassed. I knew from the moment I saw you at St. Bart’s that I wanted you as a flatmate. I realized that I needed you in a way I only came to understand much later, but I knew enough to know we had to get rid of that cane as soon as possible. You had to be able to climb the stairs. 

Your chair. I can reach out and run my hand over the fraying fabric. You refused to even get it reupholstered, and I was glad. You were sitting there our first night in the flat, the night I almost died again from Mary’s gunshot, the night after the funeral when we both cried for Mary and the baby, the night I first put my hand on your hair as I passed you. I was so afraid that night, but you just looked up at me and smiled. You reached out a hand and drew me back to you. I knelt in front of you, love and fear in my eyes, I’m sure. You leaned forward. You put your hands on my shoulders, then on my face. You kissed me. As if it was the most natural thing in the world. As if it was inevitable. I suppose it was. 

The kitchen table. A lot happened at that table, didn’t it? Around that table. On that table. That was where you were sitting when you first told me that you loved me. And Mary, of course. I know you wondered why I was silent for so long. It was because I never expected to be loved. I never thought of myself as the sort of man that anyone loved. I said in the wedding speech that I was dismissive of the virtuous, unaware of the beautiful, and uncomprehending in the face of the happy. I still remember every word of that speech. But that had already begun to change. You made me aware of all those things. I learned virtue from you, I learned how to appreciate beauty from your eyes, from your face, from your body moving under mine. I learned how to be happy. Because you made me happy here. 

Another thing about the kitchen table. That’s where I took you for the first time. You were in the kitchen berating me about never buying milk. You may not have realized it, but your face is beautiful when you’re outraged. It wasn’t long after that first slow kiss in your chair. I remember sweeping things off the table, china and lab beakers crashing to the floor. Then I had you down on your back across the table. You were still struggling halfheartedly when I unzipped your jeans. Stroking your cock with one hand, my other hand braced on the table. You were whispering my name into my mouth as you came. I cupped your face with both hands and kissed you. Then there was blood on your face. I was furious with myself. I thought somehow I had hurt you. Then you looked down and saw the blood trickling from the palm of my hand where I had ground it down onto a shard of beaker. Your hands were still shaking as you picked out the glass and stitched it up. I’m pausing to kiss the scar. There. I never felt the pain. 

The wallpaper. Good thing they kept making this wallpaper, since Mrs. Hudson required regularly re-paperings on account of bullet holes or blood or other accidents. How I miss her. Logical that she left the house to us. She knew before either of us did that we were a couple. She knew me well enough to know that I would never want to leave. 

The desk. I was sitting there when I first realized that I was in love with you. Funny, I never told you that. You were standing at the window. I yelled at you. “Don’t you realize what’s going on?” But, of course, I was the one who hadn’t realized what was going on. With me. With us. You turned and told me that you knew I was for real. “Nobody could fake being such an annoying dick all the time.” You weren’t upset because you thought you’d been taken in. You were upset because you cared for me. I realized I loved you in that moment. Not the most opportune time, was it? 

So many things as I look around me. So many memories. I had hoped I would have time to write about more of them, but I’m tired tonight. More tired. I think it may be soon, my dearest, dearest John. So one more. This couch. This is where you first took me. Rainy Sunday morning. We had been kissing. You were, you are, quite a brilliant kisser. That always surprised me. Your kissing had a poetry to it belied by your practical jumpers. I asked you to take me. You knew what I meant. Neither one of us had done it that way before. You asked me if I was sure. More sure than of anything in my whole life. You wanted to go to the bedroom. I wanted it to be here, on this couch, in this room. The center of my universe. Yes, that first time was somewhat cramped, a bit awkward, a bit painful, glorious in every possible way. Your hands were in my hair, then stroking my back, holding me. You came inside me, holding me, shouting my name. How could I ever leave this room, my everywhere? 

So it’s appropriate that I’m writing these final words from this couch, with you asleep beside me. Know that I am yours, then, now, always. Dearest John. 

Yours ever, 

Sherlock 

~~~~~~~~ 

“John.” 

”John.” He looked up. Mycroft was standing just outside the kitchen. “It’s time.” 

“My….” John cleared his throat. Nodded. He carefully folded the pages, put them back in the envelope, and slipped the envelope inside his suit coat. Next to his heart. “Mycroft. Could you give me a hand? I’m feeling a bit shaky.” 

“Of course.” Mycroft came over to the chair in four long strides. He hesitated, then put out his hand. John took it and pulled himself up. Shifted his hand to Mycroft’s arm and left it there. 

“I’m ready. I suppose one of the ever-present black cars is down there?” 

”No,” said Mycroft. A pause. “I drove. The Mercedes. It’s silver.” 

“More instructions from Sherlock?” 

”No.” Another pause. Then a slight smile. “I know you hate them so.” 

John held on tight to Mycroft’s arm with one hand, and patted his coat pocket with the other. 

”Thank you, Mycroft. Let’s go.”

**Author's Note:**

> As Mycroft said, all lives end. This is just a reflection on one possible timeline, one branching of the story of infinite possible branches. Someone has to go first, after all. It's cold and gloomy where I am, rain pattering on the windows. Just feeling emotional about these guys today for some reason. I followed original canon here for Mary and the baby. Nothing against Mary generally - I'm writing a gen fic where both Mary and the baby are alive and well. A much happier one than this, at least so far!


End file.
